{"id":777006168,"date":"2023-06-12T08:56:38","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T11:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=777006168"},"modified":"2026-04-22T21:05:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:05:41","slug":"graft-conviction-against-former-pagcor-chair-upheld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/graft-conviction-against-former-pagcor-chair-upheld","title":{"rendered":"Graft conviction against former PAGCOR chair upheld"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Genuino and two others were sentenced to six to 10 years in prison and perpetually disqualified from holding public office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Philippines.- The Sandiganbayan, the Philippines’ anti-graft court, has upheld the conviction of former Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR) chairman Efraim Genuino<\/strong>.\u00a0In March, it convicted\u00a0Genuino for misusing PAGCOR funds<\/a>\u00a0in 2012 by releasing PHP37m (US$671.9k) to the national swimming team without the board\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its resolution on June 8, the court’s Third Division rejected Genuino’s motion for reconsideration<\/strong>, stating that no substantial arguments were presented to warrant a review of the decision made on March 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court also denied the motions for reconsideration filed by the co-accused, former PAGCOR president and CEO\u00a0Rafael Francisco<\/strong>\u00a0and former Philippine Sports Commission chair\u00a0William Ramirez<\/strong>. They were sentenced to prison for between six years and one month and 10 years. They were also permanently disqualified from holding public office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separately, the court denied Genuino’s appeal to reopen the presentation of evidence for multiple counts of graft and malversation of public funds related to the mishandling of PHP183.7m in PAGCOR funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to PhilStar, authorities accused Genuino and other PAGCOR officials of illegally donating PHP44.05m<\/strong> from the state gaming firm\u2019s intelligence funds to private entities such as BIDA Foundation, Wildformat Inc. and Pencil First, supposedly without any specification of public purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genuino and two others were sentenced to six to 10 years in prison and perpetually disqualified from holding public office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":24416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Sandiganbayan has affirmed the conviction of former Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR) chairman Efraim Genuino and co-accused for the unauthorized disbursement of PHP37m in state gaming funds. This definitive ruling, resulting in prison sentences and perpetual disqualification from public office, underscores the stringent enforcement of governance frameworks and accountability within the nation's primary gaming regulator.","focusai_entities":"Efraim Genuino, Rafael Francisco, William Ramirez, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR), Sandiganbayan, Philippine Sports Commission, BIDA Foundation, Wildformat Inc., Pencil First","focusai_location":"The Philippines","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.95), operator_casino (0.8), investor_analyst (0.85), supplier_vendor (0.75), journalist_researcher (0.95)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"PAGCOR Governance Impact","query":"What are the long-term implications of this high-profile conviction on PAGCOR's governance frameworks and its perceived integrity within the international iGaming community?"},{"label":"Regulatory Enforcement Trends","query":"How might this ruling influence future regulatory enforcement actions and the scrutiny of financial oversight within other state-owned gaming entities in Southeast Asia?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[439,16333],"tags":[23911,405],"class_list":["post-777006168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-news","category-south-east-asia-news","tag-gambling-regulation","tag-pagcor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777006168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777006168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777006168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777006190,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777006168\/revisions\/777006190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777006168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777006168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777006168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}